the monks-n-us

holy crap! I'm in Tibet!
a very quick trip, but totally overwhelming. lots of stuff to process. will have to write a separate entry about this when i can articulate it better. was much more adept at dealing with the altitude than i thought i would be. only a headache the first night and then a regular intake of motrin did the trick. pictures are slowly being uploaded to the flickr site.

flight time

back in beijing. the trip to the UK was fab. manchester was very inspiring. Renny and Richard were amazing hosts and very good cooks. never decline one their invitations. trust me.

this trip has got me thinking about a lot of things, but one thing is the idea of living like a tourist in one's own home. i'm going to try and keep up the flickr stream now that i'm back in beijing. try to take more photos and maintain that sense of freshness of coming a new place as long as possible. in essence, try to experience beijing as if i didn't live here and see things with "new" eyes. will see how long this lasts. my hunch is that it will last until i get into a shouting match with a taxi driver- which hasn't happened yet, so keep your fingers crossed.

it will also help that i'm going to tibet for a week. however, i missed my flight this morning due to an overturned truck on the airport expressway, and ok, maybe i left a liiiittle late. but the driver said, "wow, this kind of traffic you only see once a month." once a month? i couldn't tell if that was a lot or a little, but i think if there is a truck overturning on this short stretch of highway once a month, that would appear to be a serious issue. it also means i should probably leave a liiiittle earlier tomorrow morning.

you kay?

been in england for about 10 days now.

spent a few days in london bumming around with wang wei who is doing a residency at gasworks. he's part of a group show called Slash Fiction that opens in the gasworks gallery April 4th.

then we went up to liverpool to help install wang wei's work in the "The Real Thing," an exhibition of Chinese contemporary art with a bizarre name. eighteen artists all together. if this is the real thing, then what was the other stuff? fake things? evidently, as my friend Pauline Yao is curating forged realities at U-Space in Beijing. the "fake show" opens in a few weeks on april 14.

now currently spending time in manchester with renny o'shea and richard gregory of quarantine. wang wei comes up here in a few days and we'll be exploring the city, meeting people and trying to see if we can maybe make something. seems like there are lots of possibilities- at first glance it seems that manchester could be about as wacky as beijing.